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Precisely, their situation is up for them to deal with, NOT MINE. I do not have to pay for their situation, just as nobody ever paid for mine. I am a truly happy woman who does not attack other women for having families (I am very happy for women who have families and means of supporting them), I just do not want to pay to raise other people's kids. If you have a kid, you are making a statement that you have reached the level of maturity (psychologically and financially) where you can raise a kid. Raising a kid is the job of the kid's parents. Fortunately, a great majority of people have means of raising them (not well off people, but also average off people who can afford to raise their kids at an average level of well-being). Those who can't raise them shouldn't have them, not ask other people to raise them. That is the talk I talk and the walk I walk. You can oppose my opinions as much as you want with your own arguments, but please stop psychoanalyzing me (very incorrectly, as you are apparently very unfamiliar with a type of woman like me) and making insulting personal comments because I am a champion insulter and will insult you back if you keep asking for it.
It’s not up to you determine who can or should have kids. You apparently sterilized yourself, and that was your choice. You cannot mane that for other women.
And you will pay whatever taxes the US government determines you pay. You don’t own or run this country. You seem to have difficulty understanding that.
It’s not up to you determine who can or should have kids. You apparently sterilized yourself, and that was your choice. You cannot mane that for other women.
And you will pay whatever taxes the US government determines you pay. You don’t own or run this country. You seem to have difficulty understanding that.
You seem to have difficulty understanding that I am not trying to run a country, but voicing an opinion, just like everyone else here. I am not running for a political office, and am following this forum frankly only because I need to know what will happen in Parkchester, the Bronx in the next 10 years in terms of livability. The US government is not elected by you personally either.
Although tubal ligation was the best of very many good decisions I have made in life, I would certainly not force anyone to do what I did - however, I will also always support political candidates who run on a platform that will decrease my forced contribution to raising other people's kids, because I think other people's kids are other people's business, not mine (as you stated yourself).
Do you actually read posts? I did not say Afroamericans were morons because they were "conditioned by history" to be morons - just the oposite, that they are not morons, their history of slavery (which is comparable to hard history of many other ethnic groups) is long gone, and Afroamericans are just as accountable as anybody else for taking care of their own lives.
Yes, I do actually read posts, which in your case might be easier if you worked on your written English. I did not anywhere say that you called Afroamericans morons - you and your buddy HomelessLoser called a large swath of the population other than yourselves morons. No race was indicated. Several people writing to me here keep saying I favor minorities but I find they insert the minorities into the conversation where I have not. I do stand by the fact that minorities are treated separate and unequal in the US.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Also please do not say that I and HomelessLoser think alike, because we don't at all (not all "white people" are alike, for your info).
Who am I to make judgements? I am the same as you, a citizen of this country (you being born into the citizenship without any of your own effort, and I having earned the citizenship by my own efforts), and we are both free to arrive at our own judgements and conclusions. You can't forbid anybody to have their own opinion. I don't think your opinion is fair or constructive, but I am not forbidding you to have an opinion (or as you call it a judgement), and am not asking who you are to make YOUR judgements.
Thank you for the heads up on white people. What color am I in your imagination?
If you are going to make judgments, you should first learn to spell the word correctly, you being so superior and all. And I do find in reading your writing that you have a very superior attitude - in fact, you're a better American than I am because you worked for it while I was just born to it. How lazy am I? I guess citizens like you deserve more rights. I may judge you based on the things you write, but I don't judge, en masse, or in particular, people I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about. I don't condemn them as morons who deserve to flip burgers.
You and your solutions are starting to remind me of other historical figures who had solutions.
Yes, I do actually read posts, which in your case might be easier if you worked on your written English. I did not anywhere say that you called Afroamericans morons - you and your buddy HomelessLoser called a large swath of the population other than yourselves morons. No race was indicated. Several people writing to me here keep saying I favor minorities but I find they insert the minorities into the conversation where I have not. I do stand by the fact that minorities are treated separate and unequal in the US.
Thank you for the heads up on white people. What color am I in your imagination?
If you are going to make judgments, you should first learn to spell the word correctly, you being so superior and all. And I do find in reading your writing that you have a very superior attitude - in fact, you're a better American than I am because you worked for it while I was just born to it. How lazy am I? I guess citizens like you deserve more rights. I may judge you based on the things you write, but I don't judge, en masse, or in particular, people I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about. I don't condemn them as morons who deserve to flip burgers.
You and your solutions are starting to remind me of other historical figures who had solutions.
HL, your essay is well composed, but these details about slavery in the US are extremely widely known, and there is no point in constantly admonishing me or anyone else to "learn history", because everyone has learned it long ago.
Well, first of all, I honestly wasn't trying to "lecture" you but was building up a point: due to slavery and the aftereffects thereof, the black and hispanic populations, even in their original native lands, never mind after such an soul-shattering experience, were bred for strength and stupidity* -- "you don't want intelligent slaves."
So there's that to realize and then keep in mind when speaking about what to do about our current situation: we're dealing with a highly traumatized population that's been deliberately dumbed-down from their already-low achievements (relatively speaking compared to the great civilizations of the East and West).
Secondly, simply learning history "long ago" is no rebuttal to being reminded of its continued effects -- as Faulkner noted, the past is not past; plus, if you have indeed learned it long ago then chances are it was taught, as was common pedagogy of the day, as dry facts to be memorized as such for tests and useless otherwise. Such an approach to history is actually antithetical to the historical impulse.
Finally, I'd like to return to my first point here: I really wasn't trying to "admonish" you and going forward I sincerely hope you keep in mind the fact that internet communications are bereft of non-verbal cues which comprise at least half the semantics of any dialogue -- and we have evolved to have a negative bias, as you probably know, so it's very easy to attribute totally unintended motivations to mere words on a screen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
I can only say that history of European Catholic church's Inquisition, or history of anti-Semitism from Roman Empire to Nazi Germany, is bloodier and filled with much more unspeakable torture than history of the US, yet nobody in Europe or anywhere uses burning of heretics by the Inquisition or gassing of Jews by the SS as the explanation why the persecuted free thinkers or Jews
Again, a few points:
1) You do realize that it took the Jews literally thousands of years to achieve the place in the sun they have now as a people...right? The Jews were absolutely of no consequence for civilization until the latter Roman Empire, and really did not begin to make their mark until the European Enlightenment. So things take time....
2) Jews can almost always "pass" for non-Jews and thus escape the public opprobrium and lack of opportunity otherwise imposed; very, very few blacks have been able to do this.
3) Jews come from an ancient "book culture" like Asians and so have quite a "built-in advantage" in that WRT the modern world with its highly abstract lifestyle.
4) The Holocaust was seven to twelve years, depending on the metric(s) used, and limited basically to Europe (with a very short-lived attempt or two in North Africa and the Middle East); Western-style slavery last hundreds...the scale is simply incomparable, incredible as the two are individually.
There may be more but those jumped out at me right away...again, not to get into a "Superman Vs. Batman" debate here but there are distinctions and these make all the difference....
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
should forever stay on generational welfare, drop out of free public high schools in order to get pregnant or join the Crips, and refuse to constructively contribute to a working society.
And you know that I absolutely hold minorities totally responsible, too.
But understanding is not excuse-making; understanding is to improve...there is a problem -- black and hispanic underachievement and, frankly, mayhem (it costs a society a lot to have black and, to a lesser extent, hispanic populations in significant numbers [namely, as a proportion of the total tally]; this ain't p.c. but it's a fact the world over) -- and I'm interested in solving it.
Solving it means to thoroughly understand the problem, including its genesis.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Sorry, I do not see "history" as the explanation for anti-social behavior, particularly if it is a remote history in which nobody presently alive has lived.
Now you've either forgotten your history or totally missed the point of having been taught it in the first place (and I do say that with all due respect):
It's not remote history at all -- as late as just a generation ago, it was perfectly legal (and in many cases even required by the government itself) not to hire blacks or house blacks simply because they are black (same goes WRT hispanics, though again to a significantly lesser extent). And in fact, it was just a relatively few years ago that the last person born into slavery had died!
Also, why do the Jews keep bringing up their alleged thousands of years of persecution?? Never mind how ridiculously paranoid that sounds -- basically "the whole world is against me!" -- why do Jews use this and the Holocaust that happened in Europe at the hands of Europeans to be anti-social to the Palestinians???
Because history explains everything.
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
African Americans have no more historical reason than anybody else for antisocial behavior in the present. Everybody's social group has been oppressed by some other social group at some point in history. That has no connection with personal responsibility and personal maturity in the year 2017 in the modern world.
Again, you're confusing "reason" with "excuse."
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Originally Posted by elnrgby
Sorry, as opposed to whoever it was that invented the alleged words of Jesus about the poor, I firmly believe that both poverty and welfare handouts can be eliminated if everybody in the society pulls his/her weight of adolescent and adult responsibility.
I agree -- and guess what...the already obscenely rich are getting still yet another huge tax break now with the new tax bill about to pass the Congress...if corporations and rich people would only do their fair share, we can have a near-Star Trek society within just a hundred years -- tops.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
Your cryptic closing remarks suggest that you have "your own reasons" for homelessness, which I respect as long as you pursue your vision with your own resources, and do not seek the resources of taxpayers .
But I am a taxpayer, and have been since 14 -- why should millionaires and billionaires get taxpayer resources but not me, who's averaged $15K/YR in taxes for thirty years??
And my remarks weren't "cryptic" at all unless you expect me to provide a factual list of reasons (and not "excuses," mind you)...if I described my love as a rose, would you find that cryptic as compared to describing my love as 6'2"/32EE/28"/46"?
* Note that I am indeed suggesting not only were they bred for such during slavery, but even before, in their own native lands: traditional African rites of passage intensely emphasized highly masculine values -- many tribes had tests of pain and endurance, with at least one going so far as to cover the faces of would-be initiates with mud and letting the mud dry and then literally torturing the boys; if the dried mud cracked, because the boy had winced, he would be cast out for life and forced to live outside the village with no access to females so as to not breed his cowardice into the tribe! You're not gonna get a James Clerk Maxwell out of such an environment, you see -- and blacks and even hispanics (cf. brutal Mayan cultural practices) had centuries of this breeding out of what we today celebrate as the intellectual.
There do have to be new people in the world, and saying only well off people should have kids is essentially saying most people shouldn’t have kids. As for your friend, maybe she and her family are happy. Their situation is up for them to deal with, not yours. This is why I made the comments about you being a single, unhappy childless old woman. I truly happy woman does not have to attack other women for having families. Money is not everything in this world. You’re way too materialistic.
Lack of financial resources is a temporary situation, not having children is permanent. People, connections are more important. And all this Ayn Randian stuff in this thread makes me want to throw up. In my opinion, the economic theory that brainwashes people is overly simplistic and actually is a form a cognitive confirmation bias. And it's simply GROSS and inhumane. I have to do everything I can to not virtually choke people for their lack of humanity and their ridiculously overly simplistic ideology of poverty theory. (And their selfishness too.)
And, I have to say, reading certain posters say the same stuff repeatedly, starts to spell another thing. RACIAL BIAS. I mean my golly, some people are obsessed with talking about "ghetto" people, and criminals. I don't think they realize, their just racists. And worse is when "though protest too much." Then you really know the deal. They might not admit it to themselves... or their not well versed in actual psychology. I mean you don't have to be a schizophrenic to be mentally ill. And that's what people don't understand about intergenerational dysfunction. Almost all of it has to do with mental health. We could all use cognitive behavior therapy...... the world would be a much better place.
Yes, I do actually read posts, which in your case might be easier if you worked on your written English. I did not anywhere say that you called Afroamericans morons - you and your buddy HomelessLoser called a large swath of the population other than yourselves morons. No race was indicated. Several people writing to me here keep saying I favor minorities but I find they insert the minorities into the conversation where I have not. I do stand by the fact that minorities are treated separate and unequal in the US.
Thank you for the heads up on white people. What color am I in your imagination?
If you are going to make judgments, you should first learn to spell the word correctly, you being so superior and all. And I do find in reading your writing that you have a very superior attitude - in fact, you're a better American than I am because you worked for it while I was just born to it. How lazy am I? I guess citizens like you deserve more rights. I may judge you based on the things you write, but I don't judge, en masse, or in particular, people I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about. I don't condemn them as morons who deserve to flip burgers.
You and your solutions are starting to remind me of other historical figures who had solutions.
Dude, English is my third language which I hardly ever spoke (although I learned it in school) until age 23. How many languages other than English do you use at my level of fluency? Also, my tablet is fairly user-unfriendly (the screen is broken and does not readily respond to typing), so I don't bother to correct all the typos, as long as my general drift is understandable. You should see the writing skills of my Bronx tenant who went to Monroe College for a couple of years (and English is her first and only language) to see an example of genuine illiteracy.
HomelessLoser is not my buddy, I have no idea who he is, and I do not share his ideas, but the guy is at least civil, so I respond to him in civil way as well. I don't have a superior attitude, I just stand by my opinions. There are people who cannot learn certain things, no? Okay, moron is an outdated term for that, which does have disrespectful nuances. The admin can change moron to learning disabled if that is what you are asking for.
People I haven't met and whose situations and attitudes I know nothing about... please don't get me going. I was far more compassionate until I started meeting the welfare population en masse in the course of my work. After I was able to observe their situations and attitudes, I became dismayed, appalled, and disgusted - because I was very much in their situations, but I never had their attitudes.
Lack of financial resources is a temporary situation, not having children is permanent. People, connections are more important. And all this Ayn Randian stuff in this thread makes me want to throw up. In my opinion, the economic theory that brainwashes people is overly simplistic and actually is a form a cognitive confirmation bias. And it's simply GROSS and inhumane. I have to do everything I can to not virtually choke people for their lack of humanity and their ridiculously overly simplistic ideology of poverty theory. (And their selfishness too.)
And, I have to say, reading certain posters say the same stuff repeatedly, starts to spell another thing. RACIAL BIAS. I mean my golly, some people are obsessed with talking about "ghetto" people, and criminals. I don't think they realize, their just racists. And worse is when "though protest too much." Then you really know the deal. They might not admit it to themselves... or their not well versed in actual psychology. I mean you don't have to be a schizophrenic to be mentally ill. And that's what people don't understand about intergenerational dysfunction. Almost all of it has to do with mental health. We could all use cognitive behavior therapy...... the world would be a much better place.
Not having financial resources lasted for me from the age 0 to the age 40, so in my case lack of financial resources (combined with high standards of what I would want for my kids) was strong enough reason to do what I did, and it worked out great for me. Sorry, I do believe in cooperative individualism, and I admit to my self-interests (rather than present my actual self-interests as compassion... compassion for whom except one's own group, in this case mothers raising children on limited means?). There is nothing inhumane in wishing for a society in which all parents can adequately take care of their kids (or not have kids if they cannot care for them). In fact, we routinely spare animals of the inhumanity of having an animal overpopulation. The world would be incomparably happier and easier to manage if the world population were 1 billion rather than 7.5 billion. There is nothing inhumane in wishing for such a world.
We are all equally guilty as members of the same society.
Now that's just too facile.
While I believe context predominates, it's just not true that society is "guilty"...people are born into a society through absolutely no fault of their own, so it really dilutes the meaning of words (and minorities seem to really like doing this for some reason, like how blacks can't be racist because blacks have no power) to just toss 'em around like bombs....
I'm really against this idea of assigning guilt -- not only is it unhelpful and thus impractical, it's not even true philosophically (morally)!
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
To complain about problems and do nothing is pointless.
Again just not true...leaving aside the argument that complaining constitutes its own "doing," this is an impractical attitude because it compels you to feel like you have to "do something" -- which often winds up being just anything -- because doing "nothing" then becomes the ultimate sin (so hey, "at least I tried")....
I believe the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam constitute the world's Greatest Curse of Curses by far -- it so infects our language and thought-processes that we cannot see reality without recourse to its distorted lens of guilt and damnation.
As the Chinese would advise, better to do nothing than to be busy doing nothing.
Or to paraphrase Krishnamurti's more pointed observations, a lot of great mischief comes from simply wanting to do something.
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
To claim they're unsolvable is defeatist.
Who cares if it's "defeatist" if what you care for is the truth of a matter?
Maybe they are indeed unsolvable...why would you draw a conclusion before you've investigated the matter?
And if you've investigated the matter, present your findings -- simply challenging another without evidence is bad form.
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
If someone were injured on their job, and disabled, and "fell on Section 8" you would not rent them a home to get them off the street.
Actually, almost everybody would -- it's just that no one actually knows what they're dealing with and understandably wouldn't want to take the chance.
It's why I come down so hard on my fellow homeless -- they really do smoke/drink/sleep all day!!! Not every one, and maybe not even a majority, but an incredibly high number of them do...and they blame racism, blah blah blah...but these people are literally walking stereotypes!!! Every conversation devolves into "racism" and their schlongs -- they themselves perpetuate stereotypes but blame others for "racism"....
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
So how have you done so much more for society than that Section 8 recipient?
What a ridiculous challenge -- it's her contention that she has no responsibility towards them.
I might as well ask you what you've done for West Point football lately....
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Originally Posted by NYC refugee
If you support a minimum wage that people can't live on and claim that's what they deserve because they're morons - sorry, but I have to ask you just who you,
And again, I'm such a leftist that I think public nudity should be okay (and "eff" "the children!") so yeah I support a minimum living wage in theory...but I think that's ultimately just a case of a dog/cat chasing its own tail -- better would be to explore automation and Universal Basic Income.
Otherwise, I suspect it will just be arguing over, and then merely changing, the color of the curtains on our prison cell window (to use Krishnamurti's great analogy).
Quote:
Originally Posted by NYC refugee
and HomelessLoser, think you are to make these judgments.
I have had a "disabled" person on Section 8 looking to rent my condo. I know enough medicine to determine in five minutes that she was not any more disabled than I am, and while she obviously could play the system, she could not play me. Maybe there are truly disabled people in Section 8, but I have no time to search for them. Re disability, I have paid into disability insurance my entire working life, and if we all did that, and we're granted insurance pyments only if we were truly disabled, there would be no reason for Section 8.
I can tell you for a fact that 99% of the "disabled" people I've met in the homeless shelter are nowhere nearly as disabled as they claim to be.
This is the problem with liberals and progressives -- they got played by black and hispanic poverty pimps and now anything remotely liberal or progressive is tainted.
OTOH, it should also be remembered that there is far more gaming of the system by the rich, individuals and corporations alike -- with exponentially worse consequences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
Do you actually read posts?
It's so sad that people don't take the time to read and think before they reply...surely a result of Google, Twitter, and Facebook on the culture -- I just add to my Ignore List anyone who repeatedly demonstrates mental incompetence or laziness...I take people's words seriously unless they show me I should not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by elnrgby
I did not say Afroamericans were morons because they were "conditioned by history" to be morons - just the oposite, that they are not morons, their history of slavery (which is comparable to hard history of many other ethnic groups) is long gone, and Afroamericans are just as accountable as anybody else for taking care of their own lives.
And I say that of all the morons in society, African-Americans constitute a wild percentage way out of proportion to their numbers for reasons of racism here and cultural practices in Africa before. I also claim the same, to a much lesser extent, for hispanics.
I would agree, however, that they need to be held just as accountable as anyone else -- simply because until we have really advanced genetic engineering the best way to shape the population to be one we would like it to be is through social policies...namely, held accountable the same as anyone else.
However, given the reasons for idiocy, we need to -- I say again -- come up with ways to encourage the breeding out of idiocy so that generation after generation the total population is ever more enlightened (or at least cognitively capable of such).
Take someone like Trump...he's a moron, his kids are all morons (though maybe not as totally "big-league" as him), his wives are arguably morons, too...now if he didn't have all his money, what kind of social policies could target him and his kin (I do realize that there's a sister who's long been a federal judge who seems perfectly normal intellectually)?
That's where the conversation should be, what it should be about -- not "not my fault/we're all guilty" but how do we encourage the one and discourage the other....
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